The Last Days of Magic by Mark Tompkins

Author:Mark Tompkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

16

What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?

—2 Kings 9:22, King James Version

And he [Manasseh] caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger.

—2 Chronicles 33:6, King James Version

Paris, France

December 1392

Queen Isabeau of France was dreaming of Ireland before she awoke to flat, silver light streaming into her opulent bedroom. The first full moon following the winter solstice was framed in a floor-to-ceiling window. Tonight she had made sure her husband, King Charles VI—now known more often as “the Mad” rather than his preferred “the Beloved”—was being cared for by her sister-in-law in his slightly less opulent bedroom on the other side of the royal residence, the Hôtel Saint-Pol, in the fourth arrondissement of Paris. While the nominal seat of government and the court of Charles the Mad was at the nearby Palais du Louvre, the true power of the throne lay here, in Isabeau’s shadow court, the witch court, known throughout Europe, by those few who knew, as the High Coven, for which she was the Grande Sorcière.

A small clock on the mantel chimed 2:00 A.M., the time for her witches to gather. Before she could join them tonight, she must renew her bond—a bond through blood and time—to the founder of their coven, as she did after each solstice. Though still exhausted from her most recent trip to Norway, she climbed out of her canopy bed and pulled a silk robe over her nightgown. Gliding across her moonlit bedroom, she approached the wall and pressed a piece of molding. With a click a panel swung open.

The Grande Sorcière entered into a perfectly square, windowless room. In the center, on a small gilded table, a single golden candle burned, filling the room with liquid yellow light. The Grande Sorcière knew that as long as she performed the rite, this candle, first lit by her kinswoman Taddea de la Barthe 112 years ago, would not go out and would not burn down. She sat on a plain wooden chair, gazed into the flame, and began the ritual of remembering.

She was rowing a boat up a river of blood under a dark purple sky, where a sun and a moon spun in a tight arc. Along the black sand bank, row upon row of women, thousands of them, each of them on fire, turned their heads to watch her pass.

She tied the boat to a stone wharf and stepped out onto a staircase, which led down farther than she could see.

She walked down the staircase and entered one of the many doors along its edge.

She was in the body of eight-year-old Taddea, standing at a familiar second-story window at the edge of a large square in a town she knew to be Toulouse in 1275.

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